Huawei Kirin 985 Chip Went on Mass Production

April 29, 2019

According to Chinese media reports, a supply chain source in Taiwan revealed that Huawei will begin mass production of the Kirin 985 chip in the third quarter. This chip uses TSMC 7nm enhanced version of the process.

According to the same supply chain sources, the Huawei Kirin 985 chip has entered the design stage from the current production progress of wafer test interfaces such as probe cards. It is expected that the 7nm enhanced wafer test interface will be shipped in large quantities at the end of the second quarter of this year. It will be ready in the third quarter. It is not clear whether the Kirin 985 will have a built-in 5G module.

Recently, the Huawei 5G roadmap was shown, and according to it, Huawei will launch a new 5G smartphone in October this year. The release of this time node is likely to be the Huawei Mate 30 series, and the release time of Huawei Mate 30 is basically consistent with the shipment time of the Kirin 985. Therefore, the Huawei Mate 30 series is likely to be the first phone to adopt the Kirin 985 chip.

It is understood that the Kirin 985 package uses the Flip-Chip Package-on-Package (FC-PoP) process, and CUHK has taken a large order. Huawei has repeatedly considered striving to adopt TSMC’s advanced technology with integrated fan-out package (InFO) one-stop service mode to compete with Apple’s A13 processor in performance. However, because of the cost and the extra test procedures, the Kirin 900 series processors are all packaged by ASE and its products.